Have you tried doing nothing | #10

Maybe 'just do it' isn't the problem, maybe the inability to 'just do nothing' is!

Hey friends, over the past two weeks I have been spending quality time with good friends and have started seeing several of them on a weekly basis. In a city like London, this is an absolute luxury — almost unheard of. It had exponential positive effects on my well-being and also made me realise how real loneliness is in big cities where even once a month hangs are rare. A number of them are coming to my art studio weekly now and that seems to be the central locus for us. On that note, here are three of my latest:

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This week I explore my ‘doer-ness’ and share the following reflection

I have always struggled to ‘relax’ and do nothing. A weekend of no plans, sitting on the couch in repose causes fear in me. While doing nothing seems to come so easy to many people, I have never been one of them. If I find myself with a spare five minutes, I will start thinking about what I can do to make the most of that time -- check my phone, check work emails, reply to the backlog of What’s App messages, journal, read a book and the list goes on. 

I explored this in therapy over the years but it wasn’t until my most recent session working with an EMDR therapist that I realised how deeply seated of a belief I have that I am not worthy unless I do something. This even shows up in my interactions with people I meet. As they tell me about their aspirations, dreams and things they are exploring, my mind is whirling in the background thinking about who I can put them in touch with to help make whatever they are doing better/faster/stronger. And I realised that I have always operated on this default mode that it doesn’t take that much for me to make these connections and to help these people so it is a no brainer for me to do it.

I realised that it permeates other aspects of my life. When I am at my friends’ house or at parties, I find myself washing dishes, putting empty bottles together or into a bin or cutting the cake, arranging things. Doing. Doing. Doing. 

And even on the weekends, I always find myself feeling deeply uneasy when I am sitting around doing nothing. Let me be a bit more explicit here, what I mean by sitting around doing nothing is that if I have a long stretch of a day not punctuated by plans or activities as simple as yoga for an hour. It is like I am worried about my worth as I don’t ‘achieve’ anything. I end up walking around my place, almost seeking for something to do -- arrange the things in the fridge, put away the dried dishes, re-organise something, anything! Even these little things make me feel like I am worthy, I am someone who can create order, clean things up, and always bring value into my life. When there really is nothing to do, like at 12 AM on a Tuesday evening, and my need to do things keeps hijacking my brain, sometimes I end up eating for the sake of doing something even when I am not hungry. 

I can’t just sit on my couch and enjoy being alive while I let my body relax and my mind meander. Just this evening, I was lying down on my bed having a nap as I came to realise how tired I was but when I got up, I immediately needed to do something. I ended up longboarding to the yoga studio to do an hour of hot and sweaty yoga to feel good about myself. On my way there, I could feel that my body was tired and immediately thought, ‘I always do this’ and yet during and after that yoga session, I felt good. 

I know that we don’t need to pathologise everything and sometimes we can just accept ourselves as we are but realising that this need to always be doing feels so tied to my worth and how uneasy I feel when I am not doing something makes me think it is worth interrogating. 

As I worked through a memory and talked about what has been happening in my life with my therapist, it allowed me to realise that, maybe, just maybe, these people like me for exactly who I am without me making myself of utility to them. 

Gaining that insight allowed me some relief and gave me strength to consider how I could be better to myself with this. I decided that I want the intention behind doing things to not be driven by the fear of not doing things. I want to sit with the urge to do things because I don’t want to not do things, I want to not act on it and I want to not feel shame or anxiety around it. This seems nuanced but is crucial to the change I am seeking. If the reason I do things is actually because I am scared to find myself doing nothing then the doing is just a vehicle for putting my fears at bay. Rather, I want to do things because I actually want to do them. 

American entrepreneur Caterina Fake said:

So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

And my subconscious has had me working hard at the wrong thing -- which is to work hard at not doing nothing. I realised this has caused a lot of exhaustion and cranking of the engine in first gear in my life and I want to do something about it.

I don’t want to flop on my bed with exhaustion the moment my brain stops whirling about doing. I want to summon that power to relax and do nothing when I feel like it instead. Working on the right thing means to realise when my intention behind doing isn’t driven by a true reason to do the thing. And working on the right thing also means to find things I actually want to do rather than placeholders that enable me to feel like I am achieving things because I am constantly doing.

This summer I was going to train in a bunch of other massage modalities and sound healing and this and that. As I start to step into the truth that I don’t need to be doing or achieving to be worthy, I am challenging myself not to sign up for all these different training sessions. I am putting it all on hold, even if it makes me a bit uneasy. I am challenging myself to a summer of relaxation and enjoyment, of fun and festivals. And most importantly, I am asking myself, hey, have you tried doing nothing?